The Kovno Ghetto Orchestra

(1943-1944)

Following the German occupation of Kaunas,
many of the city's leading musicians, were forced to move to the Jewish
ghetto. Most brought their musical instruments with them. However,
on August 18, 1941,
soon after the sealing of the ghetto, the Germans held a special "Intellectuals
Action" which resulted in the murder of 534 of the most educated
men in the ghetto. Afterwards, most musicians were afraid to publicly
declare themselves as professionals. The Jewish council decided the
best way to protect these musicians was to make them policemen and issue
them uniforms. During the summer of 1942,
when the killing actions had stopped and the ghetto was in the midst
of its "Quiet Period," the council felt it was safe to ask
permission for the ghetto's musicians to regroup into an orchestra.
The orchestra consisted of 35 instrumentalists and five vocalists led
by the noted conductor Michael Leo Hofmekler and the concertmaster Alexander
Stupel. Performances were held bi-weekly, and a total of 80 concerts
were given during the ghetto's history. Performances were given in the
ghetto's Police House, the former building of the Slobodka Yeshiva.
They were coordinated by the ghetto's director of education and culture,
the noted linguist Chaim Nachman Shapiro (who was also the son of Kovno's
chief rabbi). Though the first concert, which began with a moment of
silence followed by "Kol Nidre" (the opening hymn of the Yom
Kippur service), featured only serious music, many in the ghetto
felt it was unseemly to hold concerts in a place of mourning. They considered
these concerts to be solely for the ghetto elite and a desecration of
the yeshiva. However, despite these criticisms, most felt that the concerts
served a useful purpose in raising the level of morale in the ghetto.
Ironically, though the musicians were initially made policemen as a
form of protection, during the "Police Action" of March 27,
1944, only the
musicians were spared transfer to the Ninth Fort.

Among those pictured
are: Mordechai Borstein (left), Kalrisky (middle), and Maya
Gladstein (right). Bornstein and Gladstein both survived and
moved to Israel, while Kalrisky perished.

Yerachmiel
Wolfberg and Yitzhak Borstein

Among those pictured are:
Yankele (the 13-year-old youth playing the violin at the back),
Michael Hofmekler (standing at the left), Boris Stupel (sitting
next to Hofmekler), Alexander (Shmaya) Stupel (standing at the
top right). Boris Stupel survived Dachau and later immigrated
to Australia. His brother, Alexander, perished in Dachau.

Among those pictured are:
Alexander (Shmaya) Stupel (front row, third from the right), a
well-known German-Jewish violinist, and his brother Boris, standing
behind the violinists. Boris Stupel survived Dachau and later
immigrated to Australia. His brother, Alexander, perished in Dachau.

Robert Hofmekler (1905-1994) was the son of Motel and
Bertha (Blinder) Hofmekler (spelled variously as Hofmekleris and Gofmekler).
He grew up in a highly musical Jewish family in Vilna,
where his father was a well-known cello player. Robert had three siblings:
Zelda, Michael (b. 1898) and Leo (or M. Leo, b. 1900). In the fall of
1920 the family fled from Vilna to Kovno.
Michael was a gifted violinist, who was decorated by the Lithuanian
president in 1932 for his cultural achievement in propagating Lithuanian
folk music in performances, recordings and transcription. Leo served
as the conductor of the Lithuanian state opera in the 1930s. After the
Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940 he was appointed music director and
conductor of the National Radio Orchestra in Vilna. Robert emigrated
to the U.S. in the fall of 1938.
Following the German occupation of Lithuania in the summer of 1941,
Leo, his wife and two children were forced into the Vilna ghetto, where
they all perished in 1942
or 1943. Motel
and Bertha and Michael and Zelda were forced into the Kovno
ghetto. Motel played in the ghetto orchestra. He and Bertha perished
in the ghetto early in 1944. Zelda’s husband, David Kovarsky,
was dragged from his home and shot by Lithuanian nationalists during
the early days of the German occupation of Kovno. Zelda and her daughter
perished in an underground malina (bunker) during the final liquidation
of the ghetto. Michael served as the conductor of the ghetto orchestra.
He was probably deported to Stutthof during the liquidation of the ghetto
and then transferred to Dachau or one of its satellite camps. In late
April 1945 he
was evacuated and ultimately was liberated in the vicinity of Landsberg,
Bavaria. Robert, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in January 1941
and served in Europe with the 9th Infantry and 10th Armored Division,
found his brother at the St. Ottilien displaced persons hospital camp
in June 1945.